Landscape From Liberia, W. Africa

[liberiabound]

Well I am working in Liberia now and love the sunsets here. My wife and I have moved here as missionaries and have been blessed with a house looking out on the ocean.

I am new to photography, but am willing to learn. I need some CC, I want to improve my shots of sunsets. Any thoughts would be great- this is the view from our house every night!

[xs400]

Beautiful views from your new home. Nicely done.

I hope you'll be sharing more pics from Liberia. I'd certainly like to see more.

[Ash]

Welcome to the forum liberiabound.
A fine way to start.
I worked in a mission hospital in Kenya not long ago, which was quite an eye-opening experience.

Sunset shots are quite a skill in exposure technique, and if you haven't already done so, I'd suggest a quick read of the basics of exposure and how to get the beautiful array of colours painted in the sky onto your images.

One of the aspects that makes a sunset photo not quite look like the way it was seen is that the photo was taken at a less favourable time. To me, sunset/sunrise photos should be taken around the time when the sun is setting or has risen, and almost coming to the final stages of the sunset colours appearing in the sky. Straight after the sun has set, you find the sky just above the horizon is very bright, whereas the rest of the sky is not quite bright enough. By taking a photo at this time, you run into troubles trying to get the right exposure because of the large range in light intensity. It can be done, but usually not with the camera's auto settings. Hopefully these will shed more light on the subject:

Try these for starters:
Understanding exposure
Exposure, shutter speed, aperture and ISO
Sunset Photography Tips and Techniques - PictureCorrect
Sunset Photography or How To Photograph Sunsets | DIYPhotography.net

Correct metering is a very important part of making sunset shots work. See here:
Photography techniques: Light metering

More detailed references can be found on this article:
Learning basic photographic techniques

[Damn Brit]

Moved to Photo Critique.

Ash has given good advice, just to add to that, google Rule of Thirds and Composition.

[kevinschoenmakers]

One tip about sunsets: set your WB to 'sun' and not on Auto. This way it will not compensate the rich saturated colours that accompany a sunset, colours you will want to keep. Also, move your horizon down (or up, but out of the middle is what counts) and level it in PP.

Hope this helps.

[liberiabound]

Thanks for your thoughts, I will give those pages a look

Also thanks for the tip on setting WB to sun, I will try it next time